Watch the skies, people…..

Alright, I may be gently losing my mind but I have witnessed something fairly bizarre today and was curious to know if anyone had any thoughts on it.

I was working on night shift Thursday night and had not been home for very long today when I was rudely disturbed by a very odd thing. I was relaxing at home, down Hackney Wick way, when there came a thunderous noise over the top of my apartment block.

Being a curious soul, I wanted to find out what was disturbing my reverie so I went onto my balcony just as the building I was in was buzzed at low level by two dirty great Chinook helicopters flying in formation. Honestly, they were so low that I could see one of the crew members in the back of one of the beast machines in all his jumpsuit and flight helmet finery!

 

What was bizarre also was that I could see him because the back door of his craft was down. Now I am not an expert in aircraft but I am pretty sure that the doors would usually need to be closed in order to effectively get around!

Not only were they flying EXTREMELY low in the east London area at two in the afternoon but they were also jinking side to side rather than flying in a straight path. Truly a compelling spectacle….

This was all very odd but kind of fun in a ‘Boy’s-Own-adventure-pretending-to-be-Action-Man’ kind of way, but then they went and did something I was really not expecting. They turned westward and flew at tree top level into the boundary of the eastern side of Victoria Park whereupon they both, still in formation, dropped into the park itself. They were only there for about 30 seconds to a minute at best when they took off again, turned north, and flew off in formation. They were still going at low level, mind you.

Now, I spent a short time looking around the interweb to see if there was any explanation for this intriguing display and I have noticed that, although there was nothing about covert ops going on in the east end today, there are a lot of people who have noticed more and more the regular exhibition in London of Chinooks flying in formation (albeit not as bloody low!).

I have also noticed these sinister looking things buzzing across the London skyline, usually east to west along the river path, but I am now really curious to know why the general E3 area is now being used for military manoeuvres. 

A wing and a prayer…..

How was your day today, folks? Busy? Boring? Mundane? Manic? Were you inundated with untold amounts of demands on your time and felt that the whole day was going to hell in a hand-basket? Yeah? Really? Poor you. Little delicate wee flower that ye are!  

I know someone who had a real bitch of a day at work today?   

Big kudos, say I, to the flight crew who managed to barn jump that bad boy over the perimeter fence at Heathrow airport and kept it in one piece (relatively speaking) as it came to a shuddering halt at the end of the runway. All this with no loss of life. Outstanding work, boys and girls! Truly outstanding!

Mind you, I don’t envy the poor bastard who was at the helm his next job of going to his bosses  and explaining why their shiny wee plane is lying in a crumpled heap at the end of the lawn (“Honestly! We can’t have nothing nice here!!”)!

 

There are definitely no pockets in shrouds, officer…..

Alright, so it is another year and we have all gotten over the collective lunacy that is Christmas (thank the maker!)! The world is staggering out from the mirk and enforced mirth that we feel we must endure every fecking year even though it appears to be the most stressful collection of days on the planet at any one time. It is over. Let it go, for the love of all that is holy, please……

….or is that just me…? 

Nevertheless, it has become a new one. It is now officially 2008 and we are not even into taking the wrapping off this bright and shiny new year and looking for where the batteries go when one of the funniest news story I have personally heard in a long time cropped up on my daily trawling of the interweb.

When first I read this I laughed so hard I think that I wet myself a small bit!!  Was it wrong of me? Hell, maybe but I care not a jot! I thought it was a plain up-and-down funny story. If you haven’t picked up on this story already you can catch this report from the scene on the day it happened in Midtown Manhattan. 

  

Honestly, bless ‘em! 

I am serious here. These lads have now been arrested and are going to face charges for fraud. I understand that the authorities had to do something about this but I truly hope that the judicial system show a modicum of mercy here.

Seriously, folks, have you actually seen this pair of knuckleheads? Lets take a quick look, shall we?  

   They look like the pair of them couldn’t carry a semblant thought betwixt the pair of them! We are not talking about master criminals in the same calibre of Moriarty here. We are talking about two members of America’s sub-class just looking to make decent use of that which had already been given from those nice people in the New York Social Security department.

Don’t get me wrong now, lads. I am not going all soft and misty-brained over here. I am not suffering from a misguided sense of liberal love-thy-neighbour do-goodery! I am now and will continue to remain as cynical as ever I was. I just feel that there should be an element of clemency from the powers-that-be on this one.

Apparently, this collection of scallywags all lived and grew up together in one of Manhattan’s more earthier neighbourhoods, namely Hell’s Kitchen. Indeed, one of the offending reprobates (the one on the right with the glasses) actually lived in the same apartment with the deceased, one Virgilio Cintron, and used to care for him over the years as his health deteriorated, due to advanced Parkinson’s Disease.

Now I know I don’t work in the health care delivery area in the US but I do in the UK and I know one thing for sure. A home care worker that would be doing similar duties in the UK would be costing a hell of a lot more than the $355 that they were trying to cash for a fraction of what he was actually doing. I am willing to bet that the going rate in the Greater New York area would be much higher.

$355, mind you, that was going to be split two ways. I don’t think that there was going to be any danger of them hightailing it down to Tijuana for shits and giggles anytime soon! 

Not exactly what I would consider a major fraud against the government, either federal or state.

That, combined with the fact that the costs of the judicial machinery that will now have been kicked into action as a result of this latest episode in Manhattan’s  daily soap opera will be end up being way in excess of the original sum involved. 

According to those in the know who lived in the same area these three lads were, to pardon the pun, as thick as thieves.  Hopefully, it will end up counting for something in the grand scheme of things. 

There will, of course, be those that put forward the argument that the cost of the cheque that was to be cashed is immaterial. It is the fact that these candidates for Mensa attempted something that is against the law that is the paramount issue. It is a fair point well made. I have no argument against that. Those who do wrong and are caught have to answer for their for their actions. That is the natural order of things in polite society, yes? 

My argument is that some degree of leniency could be brought to bear. A simple tenet, but a compelling one, I feel…..

As a side issue, it is interesting to note that the authorities have been having issues concerning the actual charge that will cover the wheeling of a dead friend’s partially dressed corpse on an office chair down one of Manhattan’s busiest avenues (I daresay that the attorney’s billable hours have been accruing like there was no tomorrow, eh?). I doubt that there is much in the New York criminal code to cover this type of eventuality!  

Either way, I am intrigued as to how this going to play out. I shall be keeping an eye on this just for the sheer comic value that it has elicited already. As I have said already, I do hope that they are just told that they are a pair of eejits, told not to be such a pair of plant-pots again, sent on their way and that will be an end of the whole affair.

After all, $355 is a very small price to lay out nowadays for such quality entertainment, don’t you think?